


'Tis the season

by framboise



Series: A Westerosi Yuletide [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Regency, Arranged Marriage, Avarice, Bickering, Christmas, Class Issues, F/M, Gift Giving, Older Man/Younger Woman, POV Alternating, Revenge, Spoiled Sansa, Sugar Daddy, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-01 07:49:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12700551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/framboise/pseuds/framboise
Summary: Lord Harrenhal puzzles over what to gift his dearest little contrarian wife for Christmas this year and settles upon a Dornish sand steed, two diamond necklaces, five silk gowns, and a spot of petty revenge against certain members of the ton...





	'Tis the season

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a series of standalone multipairing stories for Yuletide.
> 
> Sansa is a bit OOC here, I've extrapolated parts of her characterisation from the beginning of the show/books and aged her up to twenty one.
> 
> I've tried to follow Regency naming conventions and that's why Petyr is known as Lord Harrenhal (though he is technically an earl in this story, and Sansa a countess)
> 
> and if you want visuals for this fic I made a graphic [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/168138198817/lord-harrenhal-puzzles-over-what-to-gift-his)

 

 

His little wife is normally flushed with good humour after an evening spent amongst the ton, having been flattered by envious looks and fawning words about her beauty and her new gown and jewels, but tonight she is sulking and nothing he says helps to lift her mood. Eventually he guides her upstairs, hoping that some time spent in the bedchambers between the expensive linens he has lately purchased might bring a more contented smile to her face.

"Well, I think that was an uncommonly tiresome ball," he says as they enter the room, untying his cravat.

She hums distractedly and fingers the many perfume bottles on her dressing table.

"I have the thought that we might go on a tour during the next season, and leave Olyvar in charge of my business here." He glances over at her. "Why are you frowning, do you not want to visit Essos? You enjoyed it there the last time." The last time they had visited Essos, she had gotten deep in her cups on Tyroshian pear brandy and danced charmingly about their balcony wearing thin silks.

“It is all this talk about your business that has me frowning," she says disdainfully.

 _All this talk_ , he repeats incredulously.

***

Sansa has had a horrible evening and now her husband seeks to make her mood worse by being pigheaded and obstinate. "It is uncouth to talk of it so often. Gentlemen should not speak of industry,” she says to him primly.

“How do you think this house was bought, how do you imagine I pay to keep you in such a manner?” he exclaims.

She presses her lips together and refuses to entertain such a conversation.

“Yes, it was _industry_ which bought you this house, my dear Sansa, how shameful, I know. Industry that paid for your dresses, your jewels too. It is a hard life, living with such luxury, is it not?”

“Oh, you are _horrible_ ,” she says.

“And you are a paragon of goodness, my love, and it is truly generous of you to think of donating your gowns,” he declares, moving over to pluck several from the wardrobe, “and your jewels,” he grabs a handful from her jewellery box, “to those less fortunate than you.”

“Stop it, Petyr,” she says, stomping her foot.

He turns around. “Oh, it is _Petyr_ now, and not my lord.” His eyes are twinkling, he is enjoying tormenting her, he is so _rotten_.

She lets out a noise of frustration and turns her back to him, crossing her arms, and then hears him laugh. He _laughs_ at her!

“Do not laugh at me, my lord,” she says sullenly. “You are so very cruel.”

“I am cruel, _I_ am cruel?” he repeats, walking closer. He curls a hand around her waist and brushes his lips against the back of her neck so she cannot help but shiver and lean her head towards him.

“You are the cruellest little madam,” he says, tugging her closer to his firm chest as he sucks on her neck, teasing her.

“I am _not_ cruel,” she pouts.

“But I still love you despite your cruelty, your black little heart,”

She turns herself around. “I do not have a black heart,” she says. She is closer to him than she thought she was and he pulls her closer still, so that she can feel all of him, and the nearness makes her breath grow short.

His eyes rove her face hungrily and he reaches out to smooth a finger along her eyebrows. “You shall give yourself wrinkles if you frown so.”

“Then do not give me cause to frown, my lord.”

He scoffs.

She can feel her chin start to tremble. “Say that I do not have a black heart, take that back,” she orders.

He clucks his tongue and takes her jaw in his hand gently. “You have the tenderest heart, my sweet,” he murmurs with a smirk and moves to kiss her before she can retort.

She digs her nails into his behind, making his hips jerk towards her, and lets herself smile into his mouth.

***

Later, after he has fucked his wife into a better mood - and why can she not simply ask him to carry her up to their bedchambers for some sport, why must she sigh and frown and sit primly in the corner of the room without telling him what he may do to help her? - he holds her to him and smooths a hand down her long silken hair.

“Now what had you in such a state earlier, hm?” he asks, shifting his shoulders on the pillows of their bed.

“I did not enjoy the ball," she says, ducking her head to hide her face against his chest.

"Why so?"

"Some of the ladies were unkind to me," she murmurs, rubbing a finger down his scar as she is wont to do, as if it is a pattern made only for her own amusement.

"What did they do?"

"They said you were in _trade_ ," she says, and he tries very hard not to laugh at her outrage.

"I _am_ in trade," he says.

"They said my gown had been made in one of your manufactories, that there was likely to be a hundred girls with the very same gown. And then they said that you and I should not be allowed amongst polite company. That it was not the done thing to invite us."

"Did they?" he says, feeling a flaring of his old bitterness. "Well, they are fools if they cannot see that your dress was handmade by seamstresses more expensive than any of their spendthrift impotent husbands might be able to afford, and spun from the finest of YiTish silks. What were the names of these particular shrews?"

He has been pondering what to buy his wife for Christmas in a few weeks time, and thinks that a spot of petty revenge might go well alongside the other gifts he has already purchased.

She is an expensive outgoing, his little wife, and has been ever since he paid a rather large sum to prop up, temporarily, the ailing Winterfell estate and buy her off her parents. He had only been successful in wooing Sansa herself with the aid of costly gifts, since her tender maidenly feelings would not at first allow him to woo her with his mouth between her milky thighs, so he supposes that he did enter into the marriage with his eyes wide open. She had hardly hidden her avarice so he cannot blame her, and in truth he found it charming, and still does. It is like having a pretty doll to dress, to adorn in silks and lace and jewels, he thinks sometimes. A pretty doll that sulks and makes her displeasure known if she is not kept in the manner she believes she should be.

She gives him the names of the three women who hurt her and though a few weeks is quite a short time to _manufacture_ some petty revenge he would not be who he is if he could not do it in half that time.

***

The night before Christmas she is so excited for the next day's presents she can barely sleep, such that her husband gets so wroth with her wriggling about in bed that he growls angrily and ducks his head under the bedlinens to attempt to tire her out.

The next morning he wakes before her but lies there pretending to sleep and smirks as she attempts to rouse him, only opening his eyes when she says his name.

“Do you think you have been good enough to deserve your Christmas gifts, my sweet?” he asks as she nudges him out of the warmth of bed.

“Yes,” she says, lifting her chin up. She does not like to be teased where presents and gifts are involved, it is not nice. She knows that her husband loves giving her gifts just as much as she likes receiving them.

"Well then, you'd best get dressed and downstairs forthwith before some other lucky girl comes and opens them."

"Don't be cruel," she says and stomps her foot on the floor, although the thick sock she is wearing rather ruins the usual effect.

"Or perhaps we might stay abed for an hour yet," he says, eyes glinting as he tugs her towards him.

"No, _after_ I have opened the presents," she says, swatting his hand away. "And if you are about to make some horribly lewd joke about the present being on your person-" she warns him and he laughs delightedly.

"Such a bawdy mind my wife has," he says with a smirk, and she storms off to her dressing room. _He_ is the one with the scurrilous thoughts, she would not have pictured _half_ the things he has persuaded her to do when they are together intimately.

Her irritation with him vanishes however when he leads her outside to introduce her to her first present - a darling Dornish sand steed of a gorgeous golden colour.

"Oh, he is perfect," she says, reaching out a gloved hand for the horse to smell and beaming at her husband.

"And that is not all," he says, leading her back inside with his hand tight around her waist.

He seats her in the drawing room by the fire and retrieves a mound of presents tied up prettily with ribbon and then watches hungrily as she opens them, almost ripping the paper in her haste.

He has bought her five silk gowns - two for evening, three for the day - in the most exquisite shades that will flatter her complexion marvelously; he has such a good eye for fashion, her husband. He has also bought her two sumptuous diamond necklaces and a set of gilded books containing her favourite Lysian romances. She sighs happily when she looks at her pile of presents, never so thankful as to have married him on such an occasion as today.

***

Such a pure smile she gives him when she unwraps her gifts, it is enough to momentarily warm his frozen soul.

"I have three more gifts for you but they are for later," he tells her.

"Later? Why not now?" she asks with a delicate frown creasing her forehead and the beginnings of a pout.

"There are not here," he says, opening his hands while she looks at him warily. "Why don't you put on one of your lovely new gowns and make yourself even more beautiful than you already are for the ball this afternoon, hm?"

"And you shall give me the other gifts later?" she presses, glancing up at him with those wide, guileless eyes.

"Later, I promise," he says, kissing her on the forehead. "Now, have I been good enough this year to receive a present from you, Lady Harrenhal?"

"You have not been the _worst_ husband," she says magnanimously and he pulls his face into a sad frown.

She runs off, laughing, slippers tapping along the marble floor, to retrieve his present. He is curious to see what she might have purchased him, though he knows it is unlikely to be of an equal value to his own gifts since she recognises the pointlessness of gifting him something expensive paid for with his own money.

"Merry Christmas, husband," she says handing him a large carefully wrapped package.

Inside is a green velvet banyan with exquisitely embroidered silver mockingbirds along its trim. Petyr is quite charmed. "You are too good to me, my sweet. And is this your work?" he asks, running a finger along the trim.

"I have to find some occupation to wile away the hours when you are busy in town, my lord," she says mournfully.

He likes the thought of her working away diligently on his present, and missing him. After the cruel repudiation of her mother so many years ago, it is pleasing to him that his wife desires his company, along with the contents of his purse.

"But it was terribly hard, my fingers are almost raw with the work," she says, as if she has been down the pit.

"Your poor little fingers," he says and lifts them to his mouth to kiss and suck.

She regards him in such a manner that he knows they will now be late to the ball but a later entrance is truly more fashionable, he thinks, as she pushes him down onto the armchair and climbs atop his lap.

***

They are late to the Christmas ball, through no fault of her own, and it is _terribly_ embarrassing. Although, arriving later than everyone else does lend their entrance greater interest among the room, and allow more people to glance over and see what a handsome picture she and her husband make. Sansa's new gown is the most marvellous thing, the very best gown worn tonight in truth, and she feels like a princess wearing it alongside her gold and pearl diadem and one of the diamond necklaces her husband gifted her; and is pleased to see many jealous looks from the women of the ton as she saunters past on her husband's arm.

As they begin their first dance she finds herself thinking that surely her husband is one of the most handsome men of his age here tonight, slim and neat and dressed in very fine fabrics, and so attentive towards her unlike the men here who never glance once at their wives. Petyr is so genial among company and ever so popular; both men and women make their way across the ball to greet him and compliment Sansa on her gown and dancing skills. For a man who has so many friends it pleases Sansa that it is her alone to whom he returns to each evening, and who is the recipient of so many of his secrets.

Later, after she has seemingly danced with half the men of the ball and gossiped with some of the women, she and her husband are availing themselves of some wine near the refreshment table when he moves closer to murmur something into her ear. He has a habit of whispering the most _lurid_ things into her ear at polite events, making her cheeks flush and her body warm, but tonight he has a different topic in mind.

"Do you see the servant passing the note to Lady Gallowsgrey?" he asks as they watch the shrewish woman in question blanch at the words she has read. "Her daughter has journeyed to Gretna Green with her penniless soldier lover and the marriage cannot be annulled for to do so would blacken the family name even further."

"Good gracious," Sansa murmurs, trying to hide her smile. This is the present he promised her then, his reprisal for the lady's beastly words to her at the last ball. She turns to kiss her husband on the cheek, hiding the both of them with her lace fan. "What a wonderful gift, husband," she says.

Lady Gallowsgrey leaves the room sobbing, causing quite the commotion.

"Oh, that is not all of your gift, my sweet," he says and takes her hand to lead her further around the room. "Do you see fair Lady Eleanor Mooton across the room?" he asks. "She has been offered a new tonic for her nerves of late but it has had the unfortunate effect of thinning her hair," he says and then he nods and a servant brushes past the lady in question and knocks her wig off to startled gasps around her.

"Oh, you are _quite_ terrible, my lord," she says to her husband and hits him on the arm with her fan.

"Tush! 'Tis not a permanent condition," he smirks.

"And for the third woman?" she asks as they draw closer to Lady Wyndhall, who has always looked upon Sansa most disdainfully and laughed at her often.

A commotion at the other end of the hall reveals Lord Wyndhall pushing his way through the crowd towards his wife who is wafting her fan towards her very pale face. The lady's husband reaches her and clamps his hand on her arm, bending down to mutter malevolently into her ear.

"The honourable Lady Wyndhall has lately had her head turned by a roguish soldier," Petyr explains, "and her husband is informing her that he shall be taking his wife's lover to trial forthwith and thus accusing her of adultery. She shall lose her fine home and all her fine belongings in the separation."

Sansa smiles, and shivers at the very thought of being so impoverished.

"Did you like your gifts then, Lady Harrenhal?" Petyr asks, turning to her, his eyes piercing.

"I do. Truly, you are the most generous of men," she says.

He scoffs a laugh. "Only with you, my sweet, and I know that you would not have it any other way."

***

Since it is Christmas he allows his wife to linger longer at the ball than he is wont to do and indulges himself in watching her dance prettily with other men who cannot have her, flush with the joy of the tableau he has gifted her tonight. Finally, with promises of cakes and refreshments at home, they take their leave in the early hours.

Once home, they linger in the parlour with a hot toddy for her and a cognac for him, as she buzzes about the room chattering about all she has seen, and relaying the many compliments she has been given.

She pauses, the exertion of the evening catching up with her, and huffs a breath that disturbs the loose ringlets framing her face. "My feet are sore," she complains.

"Then come and sit here upon your weary husband's lap," he says, patting his leg and she tiptoes over and balances on his lap delicately before he tugs her closer, her legs dangling over the side of the armchair and his arm firm about her waist. "There now, that's better, isn't it, hm?"

She nods shyly and then peeks up at him from beneath her eyelashes. Oh, she is a practised seductress, his little wife. She runs a hand down his cravat and then his chest and he is just about to drag her upstairs to have his wicked way with her when she says, "I heard some interesting things at the ball tonight."

"Did you now?" he murmurs, fingering her hair, like silk across his palm.

"The Duchess of King's Landing has a lover, and it is _not_ her brother."

"Now, that is very interesting indeed," he says, feeling a smile cross his face. He pays for servants in many noble houses but they are forever getting themselves fired or, if they are women, with child, and then he has to go through all the trouble of employing someone new. It is easy to get gossip about men from his brothels but women are wilier, more secretive, things.

"'Tis her cousin, Sir Lancel Lannister."

"Well, that is certainly good to know."

"I thought it would be." She squirms in his lap and he stifles a groan. "I learned something else too," she says.

"Did you, my sweet, and what might that be?" he asks, giving in to the urge to bite at her bare shoulder, until she squeaks and swats him away.

"I heard that Lady Myranda Stone is with child," she says.

"And out of wedlock, dear me," he says, clucking his tongue as his mind spins ahead with thoughts of blackmail.

Thus does Sansa repay him for spending such extortionate amounts on her upkeep, by bringing him morsels of gossip he may use to plot and plan. His ledgers show a far larger output than input for her currently but he thinks he shall turn her into a practised schemer in time, all sweetness and light hiding a devilishly cunning interior.

And at that thought he really does have to get her to bed before he ravishes her on the rug in front of the fire and scandalises the servants, although it has been a while since he has shocked their long-suffering housekeeper so maybe the parlour will do, he thinks, and hoists his laughing wife up and staggers over to the chaise longue with her, setting her down and ripping open a perfectly good dress while her sharp little nails tear his own shirt to shreds.

"Vicious little thing," he says, as his hand dips between her legs.

"Reprobate," she calls him and he shushes her wicked laugh with his smiling mouth.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> please comment, I'd love to hear what people think!
> 
> my tumblr: [framboise-fics](http://framboise-fics.tumblr.com)
> 
> and there's a rebloggable photoset [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/168138198817/lord-harrenhal-puzzles-over-what-to-gift-his)


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